ABBYY Vantage Reviews

We had to extract some data from a commercial policy, which can run up to 300 pages, for a client. It was a challenge to look for the action data and extract it out of those 300 pages. With ABBYY FlexiCapture, we were able to do that easily by using its repeating group feature. It was helpful. For doing the same in Kofax, we would have had to heavily rely on scripting. There is no way of doing it with low code.

Its ease of use is valuable. It is easy to use and configure.

Its ICR is really good at handwriting recognition. The last version of ABBYY FlexiCapture that I used was better than other tools such as Captiva and Kofax. The base OCR engine of ABBYY is also very good. In fact, Kofax was using ABBYY's OCR engine in the last version, but they came up with their own engine.

One good thing about ABBYY is the training. All the training courses are available in ABBYY University. They were not free initially. They were instructor-led, but now, ABBYY has made them open for everyone to learn, whereas with Kofax, you have to purchase training courses, and then you can learn. With ABBYY, everything is there in their knowledge base.

I have not used it in the last six months, but at that time, there were some stability-related issues. These were known issues. They might have already fixed them, and it might have been improved by now. We had raised tickets, and they were working on various tickets. The known bugs included crashing of the application when there were more than 500 pages in the configuration window. It did not work in such cases.

There were also issues related to the classification by training. There is a feature in ABBYY where you can classify the type of a document, but it was not very effective when you trained it on a lot of variations. It worked fine for up to 10 or 15 variations but for anything beyond that, it was a mess. It wouldn’t work.

They can have more advanced workflows. They can have some custom status in their workflow. It was there, but they can introduce more cases such as triggering an email or interacting with other systems with APIs. They can be included as stages in their workflow rather than doing it all by scripting. 

They can also work more on connectors. The ABBYY connectors are there for SAP and SharePoint, but they can include more connectors. ABBYY's usage has increased. I have seen many companies using ABBYY in recent times, and it will help a great deal if there are more connectors to connect with the end systems.

I had worked with ABBYY FlexiCapture for around five years. Currently, I'm working with Kofax, and I have not worked with ABBYY for the last six months. The last version that I used was version 12.

I have not seen FlexiCapture environments with a lot of users. At the most, I have seen 20 users, which included five or six business users, five or six developers, and a few people from the admin and config team. That could be because at the time of implementing a project, not many people were required. When we handed over the project, more business users would have been created. It all depends on the phase of the project.

We did try to reach out to them for some of the challenges. They wanted us to take some proper services consulting, but we were able to manage on our own. We did not interact with the services consultant from ABBYY.

I used ABBYY FlexiCapture in my previous organization. Currently, I'm working with Kofax. Both of these organizations are service-based, and they provide services related to implementation, development, and other things. The tool that we use is decided by the client. When we approach a client, if they have already purchased a license of ABBYY or Kofax, we have to execute the use cases by using that tool. Otherwise, it will be a loss of a lot of money for them. 

If they don't have a tool, we do try to suggest what would be best for them, but it is up to them to decide which tool they want to go for. They can go for ABBYY, Kofax, TotalAgility, or any other tool.

I would recommend ABBYY FlexiCapture for those use cases where only OCR is needed, and there is no need for business processes. That's because not much branching is there in the workflow. It does not have a powerful workflow feature. If you are using it in association with any BPM or RPA tool, there is the ease of configuration, extraction, and classification. That's one thing that I like about ABBYY.

FlexiCapture is a good product. It can be used for any kind of use case that requires OCR. Except for the unstructured content part, which is there in Kofax, I cannot think of a use case that cannot be solved by using this solution. It caters to most needs of the projects. ABBYY is positioning this tool as only an OCR tool, not as a BPM tool. Kofax is an OCR and BPM tool. That's the difference, but I would not like ABBYY to change it because that's what makes ABBYY the simplest. There is a single component, which makes it easier to understand. When you add more features and modules, the complexity also increases from an understanding perspective. We can suggest more features, but it would be a trade-off.

It is a straightforward setup. If you have a cloud deployment, you just need your tenant. You simply start using it after installing a thin client on your machine. 

I have used ABBYY on the cloud. I had used ABBYY as a standalone installation on my machine. I have used ABBYY as a distributed solution within our VPN.

Deploying simple bug fixes in ABBYY doesn't take much time. It can be done within two minutes. When deploying the whole project from scratch, I have not seen it take more than 10 minutes. It can be done easily, and it is a straightforward process. To import from one environment, you just change the variables to cater to the needs of another environment. You just go there and import it. It is that simple.

You need to purchase user licenses, and you also need to purchase the license for the pages. User licenses are required for your developers to use the developer tools, and you also need to ensure that there is a pool of licenses for the business users so that they can log in and perform their activities.

It has a very simple GUI. When a person is using ABBYY FlexiCapture for the first time, I would suggest exploring all the features, especially the Flexilayout Language, because it is very easy to explore all the features. It provides you with a great level of flexibility to configure complex documents. ABBYY is no-code, but there are a lot of things that you can do by scripting in Flexilayout Language. So, I would recommend not restricting yourself to the GUI-based commands. You should go and try Flexilayout Language. It is a very powerful feature in ABBYY.

ABBYY is launching new products. It is not that they're not changing anything. They have launched Vantage 2.1, which is very good at cognitive capabilities.

While pitching their tool, every product's sales team tells clients about certain cognitive capabilities and other features, which might not be possible for specific use cases. So, client expectations should be set correctly. One of the clients was expecting us to use the cognitive capabilities of FlexiCapture, but FlexiCapture is not that cognitive. Vantage is cognitive, but FlexiCapture is not.

I would rate it a seven out of ten. There is ease of use and ease of configuration, but they need to include more features. They need to make the product more stable in dealing with more variants.

Our primary use case is for processing documents and extracting data from them - using the OCR capabilities. Documents include invoices, purchase orders, things like that. I'm an IT solution manager and we are customers of ABBYY. 

We've had two main benefits from ABBYY. Screening documents is a time-consuming activity, which has no real added value by itself so the solution saves the company a lot of time. The second benefit relates to the energy involved in employees going through documents. It's tiring work and mistakes creep in. We now have an increased level of accuracy by using the solution. 

Clearly the OCR capability of ABBYY is the top feature in our context. We can rely on the ABBYY knowledge and experience to extract data and recognize texts in different situations and especially in different languages, particularly English and Chinese. 

The main thing they need to work on is simplification of the solution, particularly use of the search tool. Configuring is quite complex and it's not very user friendly, particularly the user interface if you're trying to figure it out by yourself and create some configurations for processing documents. I know they are working on it. We used the new ideas on page projects they recently released and that has been great for enabling non-IT proficient users to start configuring and using it.

The stability of the solution is good. 

It's quite easy to scale. We currently have around 10 users, mainly IT professionals but also other users. I'm responsible for managing and maintaining the solution with a support team, and we generally carry out an annual upgrade, rather than an upgrade whenever ABBYY releases a new version. We use it every day and hope to increase usage as it would help more and more people at the company. 

The technical support was good. 

The initial setup was quite simple, perhaps slightly more complicated because it's on premise so it includes taking care of the architecture. I managed the project and we built a platform in a few months. A consultant worked with me and another solution architect during the initial period. The total setup took between two to three months. 

We haven't measured ROI but definitely as mentioned, there are many time-saving benefits.

We are on-prem so we're just paying the license fee. They have a clear pricing model. You pay extra for the training content. 

The main difficulty, as I mentioned, is to get people started on it if they're not specifically trained on ABBYY or not an IT professional. It's initially quite difficult and more so now that the learning material is not freely accessible online. Other than that, it's just a matter of following the documentation and using it. 

I rate the solution nine out of 10. 

ABBYY Vantage is used for reading documents that require OCR or document intelligence, such as sales invoices.

The UI is user-friendly and ABBYY Vantage supports over 100 languages.

The handwritten recognition has room for improvement.

ABBYY Vantage is mainly available on the public cloud but for clients that use a private cloud, it is complicated to set up the solution.

I have been using ABBYY Vantage for two years.

I give the stability of ABBYY Vantage an eight out of ten.

I give the scalability of ABBYY Vantage a nine out of ten. The solution can handle millions of documents.

I give the initial setup an eight out of ten. There are two ways to utilize the solution. An individual can use the web-based user interface, which is easy to set up. If we intend to use the solution for bulk sorting, we'll need to use the API, which is also straightforward to set up. The full deployment can take a couple of days.

We implement the solution for our customers.

The price for ABBYY Vantage is at par with its competitors. I give the price a six out of ten.

I give ABBYY Vantage an eight out of ten.

We have over 1,000 people using the solution.

ABBYY Vantage offers better language support compared to its competitors, and it also demonstrates good connectivity and accuracy.

ABBYY Vantage is primarily designed as an enterprise-level solution that effectively fulfills OCR requirements. However, I do not suggest this solution for small companies or individuals.

I am using the solution mostly for voice processing.

We have approximately 30 use cases in our company.

The most valuable feature of ABBYY Vantage is flexibility. You are able to edit at a granular level providing good control over the process. Additionally, the brochures and guides were helpful in learning the solution.

ABBYY Vantage could improve the processing of handwritten notes.

I have used ABBYY Vantage within the last 12 months.

In our region, we have a lot of Arabic text that is handwritten which the solution could improve.

I rate the stability of ABBYY Vantage an eight out of ten.

The scalability of the solution depends on the use case. However, if the solution is managed well it is scalable.

Our company is expanding and correctly we have approximately 16 users of the solution.

I have not used the support from the vendor.

There might be a need to complete a few courses to get used to the implementation of ABBYY Vantage.

We did the implementation of ABBYY Vantage in-house.

We were able to qualify for a reasonable price. The price is in the low to medium range compared to other solutions.

I rate the price of ABBYY Vantage an eight out of ten.

I evaluated IBM and AI builder prior to choosing ABBYY Vantage.

If you do the training it will be easy to use.

I rate ABBYY Vantage an eight out of ten.

Our company uses the solution to develop structures for automatically reading customer documents. We produce the document definition for each layup and send data to customers. We have 40-50 developers using the solution in various departments. 

In the future, we will use the solution for automatic classifications of documents. 

The solution responds well to automatic document classifications with a 90% success rate. 

There are sometimes issues with calculations or integrations with the server when running multiple products with different languages. This causes data to not display properly in data fields. 

The system does not always train itself to recognize data properly from system leads. 

A more comprehensive training program should be available because free training books do not provide the level of detail needed. Sometimes, we encounter issues with an automatization but cannot resolve it even though we completed the associated training module. Training for particular scenarios need to be included in modules because integrations can be tricky or complex without these details. 

I have been using the solution for one year. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is very scalable. 

We had one issue with speed where we could not achieve the minimum time for processing which should have been seconds. Otherwise, the solution is really fast with basic or fixed processing. 

Support does not answer tickets in a timely manner but eventually closes questions. 

For example, I have a few tickets for assistance with DVP, data pages, and working with multiple languages but support has not yet responded adequately to the email inquiries. I would like detailed information and an explanation for whether a shadow case can be used. I cannot authenticate, determine if available onloads would fix captures, or integrate without proper answers. 

Support should respond quickly to production issues. Time zones are an issue in getting responses because support works on Russian time. 

Support should have access to prior tickets to get a cumulative picture of issues a user has experienced. Generally, they do not have details from prior tickets to inform solutions so they base their answers on only the current ticket. Having cumulative knowledge will allow support to better understand a customer's situation and use case. 

I rate support a six out of ten. 

Neutral

The setup can be complex because it takes time to learn all the menu options. Our setup took one or two months because we wanted to ensure it was done properly. We do not use many of the menu options as our use case is rather basic. 

The help page is not very comprehensive or detailed. It uses code that is formal and the world is now more informal so some options might confuse users.

I have not evaluated other options. 

The solution is a good product but there is always room for improvement. I rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

We use ABBYY FlexiCapture to recognize pictures or PDF files and transfer them to Word or Excel.

It's easy to use.

The integration with UiPath is not good.

I would like to see more documentation and guides to help gain more in-depth knowledge of how to use ABBYY FlexiCapture.

I've been working with this solution for about three or four months.

I have had no issues with stability so far.

I chose ABBYY because it had more solutions for intelligence automation, and it looked like I could combine it with other automation solutions. We currently have 20 to 30 users.

I recommend ABBYY FlexiCapture, and on a scale from one to ten with ten being the best, I would rate it at eight.

It would be during the data extraction process. The ability to extract and insert data, then structuralize it into the actionable format, would be the most valuable.

I would have liked to see them make it easier for business users to implement themselves. This is what they have done with Vantage, which is essentially a low code/no code, slightly enhanced version of FlexiCapture that is already available.

I have been involved with ABBYY FlexiCapture off and on for approximately one year.

ABBYY FlexiCapture is a stable product. The stability is good.

The scalability of ABBYY FlexiCapture is good.

This solution is used on a daily basis throughout the organization.

My company has approximately 230,000 employees worldwide.

The technical support is good. They solve problems relatively quickly.

I am familiar with IBM Datacap.

The initial setup was relatively complex. The people who install it must be knowledgeable about what they are doing.

It took some time to get everything up and running properly.

The deployment was completed in-house.

We have seen a return on investment, but I'm not sure how much.

It would be far too difficult. Because we obviously deliver these types of solutions not only in-house but also for a large number of other companies. There's plenty of ROI that we have managed to deliver for our customers, in particular, but I can't give you figures.

I don't recall the pricing.

In terms of intelligent document processing, the company uses a variety of platforms, including IBM Datacap and ABBYYFlexiCapture, among others. We were constantly reviewing market products, and we were also doing things like Hyperscience. At the moment, I'm working on a review for Vantage, which is ABBYY's other recently released product, rather than FlexiCapture.

We are partners with ABBYY.

If you are going to implement it, I would recommend a combination of engaging with a delivery partner to accelerate your initial setup and scalability and then building your own internal capability, which requires accredited users, in parallel.

Because FlexiCapture requires a significant amount of domain knowledge or technical capability to implement. I am not sure if this is outside the scope of your research, but if a company is looking to implement ABBYY products in general and does not want to require a significant increase in internal capabilities, ABBYY Vantage may be a better option.

I would rate ABBYY FlexiCapture an eight out of ten.

The most valuable feature of ABBYY FlexiCapture is the ability to create your own template on the fly. You can train and classify, you can work with those different templates without the need to do special programming for it or with minimum programming. Additionally, the solution is supporting the Arabic OCR, both of these combined features are the most important for us in the Egyptian market.

ABBYY FlexiCapture could improve the performance. We are looking for better performance because it can be a lengthy capture process and the accuracy needs to be enhanced when it comes to Arabic.

In the next upgrade, ABBYY FlexiCapture could add invoices for the Arabic or for the Middle East because it's based on European or American standards mainly.

I have been using ABBYY FlexiCapture for approximately four years.

ABBYY FlexiCapture is stable, we did not find any problems.

In our usage, ABBYY FlexiCapture has been scalable enough. We had a cluster-based operation.

I rate the support form ABBYY FlexiCapture a four out of five.

The support could be more responsive.

I have used OpenText previously and overall the solution might work better, but for our use case, ABBYY FlexiCapture has all the features we need that are important, such as Arabic OCR, and is priced well.

The initial setup of ABBYY FlexiCapture is easy.

The price of ABBYY FlexiCapture is better than some competitors, such as OpenText.

I recommend this solution to others.

I rate ABBYY FlexiCapture an eight out of ten.